During a study done by the Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School, the researchers discovered that the hormone insulin was not only released from the pancreas but from the brain as well. This discovery is how diabetes and Alzheimer’s became linked. When the brain does not produce enough insulin, the cells begin to die.

Because type 3 diabetes was only discovered in 2005, there is not a long list of symptoms like there is with type 1 and 2 diabetes. In fact, there are very few symptoms of type 3 diabetes. Memory loss, confusion and dementia are the only known symptoms at this point and those symptoms were derived from the newly discovered link to Alzheimers. The diagnosis of type 3 diabetes is done by a functional MRI scan of the brain and often times in older people type 3 diabetes is missed because of the aging process